According to the company this announcement highlights the huge application potential of its advanced power management ICs (PMICs).
e-peas engineers worked in conjunction with a team from the Dutch systems integrator SODAQ on the development and implementation of energy efficient livestock monitoring hardware for Brisbane-based client mOOvement.
Through use of mOOvement’s smart tracker, valuable data on cattle herds can be acquired concerning their position and grazing patterns, with the ability to set alarms if individual animals are not moving or fenced boundaries have been breached. Attached to one of the cattle’s ears, each tracker comprises an accelerometer, a LoRa communication module (with built-in microcontroller) and a GPS transceiver, as well as a passive NFC tag.
When the design project was embarked upon, it was clearly paramount that the size and weight of the unit had to be kept as low as possible, in order to limit the impact on the animal. This placed severe restrictions on the surface of the solar panel that could be accommodated (with it measuring slightly less than 19mm x 43mm in total and capable of generating 0.089W). Consequently, the power system needed to be ultra-efficient. In addition, as these trackers will remain on the cattle for a period of 5 years, robustness and long-term reliability were also essential attributes.
“In the past, the cattle trackers available to farmers needed to be periodically recharged. This was obviously inconvenient, requiring considerable investment of time and human resources. By being able to efficiently utilize the energy from sunlight such issues can be completely avoided,” adds Pieter Vogels, Chief Commercial Officer at mOOvement. “Together, SODAQ and e-peas, through their respective expertise in IoT and energy harvesting, have supplied us with a system that is not only reliable and operationally effective, but also compact and light enough to be animal friendly.”
